


Two for Flinching

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:10:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Gordon thinks he knows everything there is to know about the Batman. Finding out he was wrong teaches him everything he needed to know about Jim Gordon.</p><p>Beta by the prudent and patient Amanuensis, as ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two for Flinching

For a long while, Jim Gordon had thought Batman was probably a meta-human of some sort. 

He knew they were out there; Central City had Flash, and Metropolis across the bay had its alien Superman, so it made sense that Gotham's own Batman might be one of those characters. His superpower might be a little harder to define than ultrasonic speed or flight or heat vision, maybe something more along the lines of "uncanny ability to kick ass." Or maybe it was as simple as invisiblity, and the ability to appear and disappear at will. God knew he had spent enough time on rooftops talking to shadows for that one to be true. He had once earnestly addressed a pigeon for a solid four minutes before the clouds over the moon shifted and he realized his mistake. 

The night he discovered he was wrong about the meta-human thing was a night like any other: drug bust gone wrong down at the docks, his men pinned in a strafing crossfire, Batman swooping in to kick the legs out from under the thugs. He himself took a bullet graze to the midsection, but he didn't even realize it until later, and it was shallow anyway. Batman had landed himself behind the cartel's battle line, drawing their fire away from the cops and turning it on himself. The bullets weren't as much of a problem as the muscle, because their muscle had training, and got in several hits on the Batman that had Jim wincing even as he reloaded and rolled in there with fire support. 

One hit in particular: a steel cargo bin to Batman's left shoulder, hurled with crushing force, and he didn't care how much Kevlar the man was wearing, there was no way it didn't dislocate his shoulder. From what he was able to see of the fight after that, Batman's left was out of commission. Not that it tipped the balance for the perps, who were locked up and heading out in the wagons when Jim thought to look around for any sign of Batman. He looked because recently, at the end of an assist, Batman had taken to making eye contact with him before he disappeared into the shadows. Never anything much, just the slight incline of a head, or a sideways glance before the dark engulfed him. Just two comrades, acknowledging a night's work.

But that night, nothing. 

It pinged his radar, and Jim's radar was never wrong. So he went looking, just poking around a little nearby, and sure enough, there he was. Right around the bend of two container holds, in a dark corner under a broken floodlight. Something he wasn't meant to see. Batman, his head leaning against the shipping container. 

_You're hurt, let me_ — he opened his mouth to say, and then there was a growl, a low feral sound, and Batman hurled his left shoulder against the steel wall with all of his considerable force. 

There was a small gasp, a terribly human sound. Batman sank to his knees. And then a gauntleted hand smacked the side of the shipping container in frustration, lashing out at the pain. 

He had thought he was alone. Jim had not been meant to see. 

He slipped back into the shadows and left Batman there. He knew he would not have welcomed the help, would not have let Jim call for an ambulance. He had only gotten the drop on him because of the pain, he knew that, and he knew the pain must have been crushing and intense, for his guard to be down like that.

But it had been enough of a glimpse to know. The man was no superhero, no meta-human. He was flesh and blood, and he broke like any other man. The thought pleased him, for obscure reasons. Filled him with a kind of civic pride, actually. Gotham didn't need no goddamn superheroes; she would make her own, out of will and heart and sinew. 

On the drive home, it occurred to him Batman's guard had also been down because he trusted Jim to hold his perimeter. Because he felt safe, with Jim and his squad there. That gave him a satisfied feeling, deep in his gut. 

The satisfied feeling lasted as long as all feelings of satisfaction did on this job, which was to say, two minutes at the outside. Twenty-four hours later he was mired deep in loathing for his job, his life, and everyone who shared oxygen with him in a three-mile radius. Not because he was on another stake-out, or pulling down another drug ring, but because he was stuck in yet another piss-sucking party for yet another mayoral candidate who had promised yet another mythical grant to the police department, and Jim was the sacrificial lamb offered up by the department to grin like a jackass eating briars and smile and nod and act like he was fucking grateful to all the shitlicking cunts who didn't give a wet turd about the department outside of an election year, and who were happy to shovel as many blue bodies as it took into the breach between them and chaos, just so long as someone was there to fill their champagne glasses and light their expensive cigarettes. Expensive cigarettes, there was a crock of shit. A death stick wrapped in paper, and yeah, he kept his carton of Salems in his desk drawer, but damned if he was going to pay someone serious money to give him lung cancer. God, but he hated them all, he thought as he sipped his club soda and glared at the room full of empty bobbleheads.

To make matters worse, someone had switched his placecard, because when he had first come into the banquet room, his card had been on an obscure table over near the windows, where no one much would have noticed him, but when he had checked back later, his card had reappeared at Bruce fucking Wayne's table. 

He sat there and listened to the speeches, and at some point, while the dessert carts were traveling the room and people were getting up and milling about, Yancy Prewitt came over to his table. Yancy fucking Prewitt, because he sure as hell deserved the epithet too. It would be just his luck for Prewitt to remember him, which of course he did, but not of course his name.

"Officer!" Prewitt bellowed, in that horse-loud voice. "Officer, how the hell are you! I still remember that golf benefit we played together, what was it, two years ago now?"

"Five," Jim said quietly.

"Actually," Wayne interjected, "it's Lieutenant, isn't it?" And he flicked a lazy hooded glance Jim's direction. He was toying with the little plastic sword spearing his martini olives.

"Haw Haw!" Prewitt's bray of a laugh echoed around the room. The man had grown, if possible, even larger since Jim had tried to squeeze into a golf cart with that greasy lardcake. His hands looked like hams. "Tell you what, you call my office Monday morning, we'll set up a re-match, just you and me! Haw, and Bruce here too! You ever played golf with Bruce Wayne? He's the worst damn golf player I ever saw, haw haw!" And a tremendous beefy paw slammed Wayne's left shoulder with a resounding _thwack_. 

Wayne lurched forward, the little spear of olives skittering across the table. 

In sixth grade science class, Jim had learned the wonders of litmus paper. He had thought, back then, that he wanted to be a scientist. What he had really liked was evidence, and facts, and lining up the case for something to be true or not true. It was never the shoot-'em-up aspect of policework that had drawn him to the job; he was too lean and slightly built to have been one of those guys, and every bit of agility and stength he had he had worked for. The part that was like science class, that was what he liked. And in sixth grade, he had been in love with litmus paper: the way the truth would wash through it, from the bottom up, in a steady inexorable wave.

He thought of that now, watching Wayne's face, because he had never seen the color drain out of someone quite like it drained out of Wayne when Prewitt's forearm connected with his shoulder: just a wave of absolute white, washing from his hairline down. 

"Excuse me," Wayne mumbled, and staggered up. 

He waited less than sixty seconds, and followed Wayne out onto the balcony. It was a wide stone terrace, the French doors spilling light and laughter out onto the night, but in a darkened corner Wayne was leaning against the wall, quietly retching into a handkerchief. He was facing out, tucked into the balcony's only hidden sightline. Just one more wastrel, puking up his Glenfiddichs. 

Jim waited until he was done, and then placed the two Vicodin on the stone railing.

"I have migraines," he said softly. "No telling when they're going to strike, so I always carry something."

Wayne nodded, and Jim heard him try to swallow. "Should have passed on those last few martinis," he whispered. "It's always the last dozen or so that will get you."

"Yep," Jim said. "I'm betting that's true. Tell you something else that's true, dislocated shoulders can be murder. You don't want to fuck around with those. You want to talk pain, I've seen SWAT leaders with a dislocated shoulder cry like babies. I'm betting you under-medicated yourself, so you would be coherent tonight."

Wayne stilled. He folded the soiled handkerchief, then grimaced as he thought better of it, and tossed it overboard. His eyes on Jim's were steady. Jim watched the motion of his throat, watched him lick his lips, watched him consider saying any number of things before rejecting them all. _Well, score one for Lieutenant Gordon_ , he thought. 

"When you're injured like that," he said, and stopped. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't sound idiotic. "You just, you can't do shit like this the next day, is all. You have to give yourself time to heal. You can't just. . ." he waved his hand uselessly. Wayne watched the hand. 

"Take better care of yourself, son," he said, and clasped his right shoulder, just a small squeeze. He headed to the doors then, and he didn't look back at Wayne—at Batman. The son was maybe pushing it. He had at best five years on the man, but come on, it was a nice touch.

Now he was going to go slice off Yancy Prewitt's fat hand and feed it to him.

* * *

So it was bit by bit, and piece by piece. Knowing Batman's identity didn't in the end tell him much, because Bruce Wayne was just another mask. He had seen the real Wayne for about thirty seconds, and he had been puking. It was hard to be anyone else while you were puking. 

He notched his discoveries like sixth-grade lab reports, the little pieces that slowly put together the man. Adopting the little orphan kid, that was a surprising piece that he hadn't seen coming. It made sense when he thought about it, in terms of Wayne's protectiveness complex. He kept tabs on where the Wayne Foundation money went, too. That was something else he had learned, in his years on the job, in Gotham and elsewhere: rich people might shit around about a whole lot of stuff, but they did not shit around about money. He tracked Wayne Corp's investments, too, to the extent that he was able. What Bruce was doing — and somewhere along the way he became Bruce, not just Batman, and not just Wayne — required money, whole metric assloads of money, and he liked to keep tabs and make sure there was going to be plenty of it, for years to come. Just to reassure himself. 

A sense of humor: that was one he hadn't seen coming, either. It was dry, and more than a little wry, and it was occasionally bawdy. He hadn't known any of that until they had worked together for a few years, and hadn't really gotten the whole picture until one night in the Batmobile. It was a long, tedious stake-out, but Bruce never felt the need to fill any of it with talk, so Jim could let his mind drift as he sipped his coffee, watching the murky streets through the tinted windows, or what he could see of them behind the dumpster that obscured their position. So their conversation was a propos of nothing other than where his thoughts were wandering, really.

"So," he said, savoring a last swallow of French blend. Any more and he'd have to go take a leak in the alley. "Did you really sleep with George Clooney?"

Nothing said 'incredulous stare' quite like the slowly rotating head of the cowl and the narrowed eyes behind it. He returned the stare blankly. "I was just wondering," Jim said. "I saw it in the tabloids, standing on line at the market the other day. I don't normally think anything of it, half the shit they print about you. But they had quotes from you and everything, so I thought it might be genuine."

In truth, it hadn't been the quotes that had arrested his attention. It had been the photo splashed across page two, which he had seen over the shoulder of the woman reading next to him. _George's Steamy Three-Way_ , the headline had blared, over a photo of what was undeniably Bruce Wayne on a sailboat, one arm wrapped around the mast, the other around George Clooney, who had both arms wrapped around Bruce's waist and a mouth sealed to Bruce's lips. At their feet a topless woman sunbathed languidly, her nipples crossed out with black x's by the paper. Bruce had been wearing a shirt, because Jim knew he wouldn't risk exposing his scars to curious scrutiny. It was just the rest of him that apparently didn't mind the scrutiny. Jim had paid for his groceries and hurled them in the back of his car. 

Bruce made a noise like a snort and returned to his survey of the street. "It was genuine," he said. 

"Really," he said. "You slept with a movie star." 

"I've slept with several. Do you want a list?"

Jim managed a chortle, even though hell yes, of course he wanted a list. "No no, I believe you. I was just wondering about that one because, you know, you hadn't said anything about—I mean, I didn't know what your—as far as your, you know, sexual—okay, I'm gonna shut up. Whatever I'm about to say is gonna sound stupid."

Bruce made the same snorting noise. He reached for Jim's coffee and took a swallow. No small feat, when your neck mobility was limited as severely as his was in that cowl. "The Wayne Foundation gives to a lot of LGBT causes," he said. "Political lobbying, but also shelters for gay teens, that sort of thing."

"I know," he said.

"I know you know. My financials are public record, I'm aware of how closely you track them."

"Well," he temporized. "To be fair, I track the financials of all Gotham's one-percent."

"Is that what I am. Anyway, it occurred to me that giving to those causes can be a kind of cover."

"A cover," Jim said. This was maybe the most extended conversation they had ever had, that didn't involve a case. Bruce didn't chat, in the suit. 

"You give to causes like that, and people assume you're giving because of your progressive politics. But you're a gay kid in Sasquatch, Oklahoma, you need more than the fat yearly check to the HRC. Sometimes you need to see a publicly visible figure destigmatize your identity. Sometimes it's worth more than shoving money at LGBT causes, to stand up and say which letter describes you." He made a gesture with the gauntlet that might have been a handwave, or it might have been dismissal.

"I see," Jim said. "So, Clooney."

"I leaked it with his permission. He agreed with me."

He thought about that for a minute, Bruce on the phone with George Clooney, shooting the shit, strategizing. But of course they'd done a lot more than just be on the phone together. He pushed that mental image firmly away. 

_Which letter describes you_. For a millisecond it fleeted through his mind that Bruce might be transgender, but he dismissed it as quickly. "Well, good for you," he said. 

"It doesn't hurt that it puts a little more air between Bruce Wayne and Batman. People stereotype. They are what they are."

"Not all people," Jim pointed out.

"I know."

"So. . . which letter does describe you?"

The head gave its slow swivel again. "I'll let you figure that one out. You're the detective, shouldn't be that hard."

He took his reproof. It hadn't been any of his business anyway. "I mean it," he said, to erase his intrusion. "You did a good thing. You put yourself out there."

Bruce made a gesture that was impossible to read, in the batsuit. It might have been a shrug. "Just thought I should put my money where my mouth was. Or actually. . . I guess that's the other way around, isn't it."

Jim's guffaw was loud and long, and then he couldn't stop. Batman had just made a moderately dirty joke. To him. He could hear Bruce's quiet chuckle, too, and that made him laugh more. For a second it was like any other stake-out with any other cop. And then, "Heads up," Bruce said, and their guy was loping across the alley, and it was game on.

* * *

The last pieces of the puzzle didn't fall into place until he was taken to the cave. He never knew how many years Bruce was planning on waiting before he took him there, and he tried not to think about it, because he suspected the answer was never. Probably never would have, until the night he had no choice.

It was funny: you wouldn't think a knife to the leg was something you would be able to ignore. Before, when he'd been hurt in the line of duty, it had been a bullet slamming into him, and he'd always felt it immediately. A bullet was like someone punched you; it was hard to ignore. But the knife—he hadn't even known it had happened until he heard the hoarse, "Jim," and the heavy gauntlet had grabbed his arm.

And then Bruce was looming over him, suddenly shockingly tall. Or no, it was that he had gotten shorter; he was on all fours, and his palms were resting in a warm puddle. It was a dry night, and there hadn't been rain in two weeks, so that didn't make sense either. "Hold on," Bruce said, and he knew he was in trouble when it wasn't the Batman rasp, but the quiet, low tones of Bruce himself.

"To what," he gasped, before he found himself rolled on his back staring at sky, and he saw the red slicking his hands, felt the wet coating the lower half of his body and realized he meant _to life_. "Oh," he said, only maybe it came out as a groan, because Bruce said "Hold on," again, more insistently.

His shirt was being ripped off him. That was too bad, because he was so cold. It hadn't seemed this cold earlier in the evening. It was August, it shouldn't be cold like this. His leg was being hoisted up, up—ah, over his heart. That was smart. Bruce was smart. Bruce was tying something around his leg, tight. That was when it started to hurt. He expressed his concern about the level of pain to Bruce. 

"Motherfucking shit," he panted. "Cocksucking—pigshitting hell—"

"Commissioner Gordon's down, I need a bus at Lincoln and Spring stat," Bruce was shouting, only probably not to him. He could hear the crackle on the other end of Bruce's comm. 

"Copy that, ETA on a bus is ten minutes, call it out to all units, we have massive blockage on all major roadways," the voice said in a staticky whine, and that made sense. When your city was firebombed from nuclear heliships by rampaging supervillains, it was going to play hell with traffic. 

"He'll bleed out in six," Bruce said. "Call a life flight to the top of the Eastwick Building. I'll get him to the top, just get a chopper in the air, now."

"Got it, winds are preventing take-off at General, Mercy is sending a life flight with—"

Bruce switched off his comm. There were thick arms underneath him, lifting him.

"What—what are you doing. . ."

"Saving your life," Bruce said. "Your femoral artery's been sliced, you've got minutes. Stay with me."

The ride was a blur. It was black, and cold, and Bruce drove with a hand clutched to his leg propped on the dash. "Cold," he murmured, and the hand tightened. He was surely hallucinating the way the car was moving. Surely it couldn't fly. He was probably also hallucinating the steady stream of muttered curses coming out of Bruce's mouth. 

He was aware he was dying, and aware of how not unpleasant it was. Honestly, all the times he had contemplated suicide—and no one who did this job right could say they didn't, hadn't ever—he had given it up as a bad job because it all seemed so painful and unpleasant. What was that old poem? _Nooses give, gas smells awful, might as well live_. If someone had told him that an arterial stab wound felt like this, he might have signed up for one long ago. 

He thought of Babs and Jimmy, of how he wanted to see their faces one more time. He hoped they wouldn't be sad. It seemed like there should be more people for him to think about, feel regret for. Friends, maybe. But there was only one of those, was the painful truth.

From the angle of his head he could just see Bruce's profile. Somehow moving his head had ceased to be possible. "Bruce," he said. "You're my only friend. That's. . . sad."

"Don't give up on me yet, Miss Daisy," Bruce said, but then they drove through a wall of black. He woke when his body was hurled off a cliff. He opened his eyes, and he had landed on a bed, a gurney of some sort. But there were rocks everywhere, so maybe he had been right about the cliff.

"Hello, Alfred," he said, to the grave-faced man bending over him. There was a dark-haired young man next to him, working intently on his leg. The Grayson boy. He looked like Bruce, but his eyes were dark instead of light, open to Bruce's closed. They were kind eyes. He wanted to say something nice to the boy.

"Get me the sutures and four units of A negative," said Bruce's voice from somewhere. "Jim, stay with me," but Bruce was the one going away, his voice was fading into nothing. 

"Bruce," he called to him. "Don't go." He had forgotten to ask him about George Clooney, what kind of kisser he had been, and now he would never know.

"I'll tell you later," said an infinitely warm, amused voice pitched low and right in his ear. "Sleep now."

He must have, because he woke to a comfortable spreading heat wrapped around him, which he discovered was a blanket. There was clean yellow light directly above him, filling him down to his toes. 

He swallowed, and Bruce's face swam into view. "How long?" Jim rasped.

"Eight hours," said Bruce. He was wearing a dark shirt, almost as dark as the shadows under his eyes. It was clear he had slept for none of those eight hours. He could focus on a bit more of his surroundings now, or at least what he could see behind Bruce's head: glowing banks of computer monitors, sleek lights, and. . . a T Rex? Obviously whatever drugs Bruce had used were powerful. 

"You stitched me?" His voice was distressingly faint.

Bruce was wiping his hands, and tucking the blanket higher around him. "Actually, that was Alfred," he said. "I'm all right with external wounds, but for arterial stitching you want Alfred. It's good clean work; I've got a fully supplied medical bay down here. Take you for a tour, when you feel like sitting up."

"That would—" The vomiting seemed like it was happening to someone else and a bit far away, as though his body wasn't quite connected to him yet. "What did you—use—" he gasped, in between bouts. "Anesthesia."

Bruce's hand on his head was holding him over a vomit pan. There was something cold on the back of his neck, and a firm hand. He couldn't wipe his own mouth, but Bruce did it. "I'm—allergic to morphine," he whispered. 

"Hell," Bruce said crisply. "That's the sort of thing you should have tattoo'ed on you." _Not sure you would have seen it_ , Jim contemplated remarking, but then he realized he was completely naked under this blanket cocoon, so someone had gotten him that way. He thought of his body's notches and scars. Well, Bruce's were probably worse. 

"Sorry," Bruce said, as he started in on the second round of heaving. He knew to hold his head steady; any attempt to lift it made the room instantly spin and the vomiting become intense. "That's. . . my line," Jim panted. "Oh God." The ache in his gut was becoming acute. 

So that was how he got to know the batcave: twenty-four solid hours of convulsive vomiting. Bruce, Alfred, and the boy got him moved to a more comfortable bed in the corner of the cave, in some kind of small room or cubicle (it was hard to assess your surroundings when you couldn't lift your head) and after a while it occurred to him it was Bruce's bed, in Bruce's private lair, and he was throwing up all over it. Well, not over it, because there was a steady hand always guiding him to the vomit pan when he swam to consciousness. The injections slowed the convulsions a little, but nothing really stopped it. 

"I'm tired," he said. He didn't know if it was day or night down here. "God, I'm so tired. Want to—go home."

"I know," said a soft voice. It wasn't Bruce, because Bruce's voice didn't sound that way.

"I fuck everything up," he said, and to his shame there were tears. 

"You don't," said the voice again. "Shh. Rest now." There was a thumb on his brow, stroking it. God only knew where his glasses were.

"Tell Bruce," he gasped. "Tell him I'm sorry I asked him about George Clooney. Before. Not my business."

The voice laughed as softly as it spoke. "You have a fixation there."

"Okay." He retched weakly, but there was only a little bit of liquid to bring up. He couldn't figure out where all the fluid was coming from, but then he saw the IV through blurred eyes. He really needed his glasses. "Tell Bruce his sheets smell nice."

The hand was rubbing his hair now. "He knows."

"Tell Bruce—" he shivered. This bed smelled like woodsmoke and cloves and something Brucelike, but it wasn't as warm as the other had been, under all the lights. There was another blanket being draped across him, and then something even heavier, and much warmer. "Thank you," he murmured to the body that draped his. The shivering didn't stop, though. The body went away, and it came back hotter than before—sliding under the covers, anchoring him, heavy arms, firmness wedged against him. 

"That's better," he sighed, and he tried to turn toward the body, but the motion was too much, so he threw up on it a little, just some bile. 

"Just like I dreamed it," sighed the body.

* * *

Unexpectedly sentimental, was another one he hadn't seen coming. 

It was during the long slow death of his marriage—or what was in retrospect its long slow death, because at the time he hadn't really recognized anything was wrong, the truth was, and didn't that tell you everything you needed to know. But it was his birthday: his 45th, in fact. That was the year he hadn't gone out to dinner with Barbara to celebrate. She hadn't offered, and he didn't mention it. He hadn't remembered it was his birthday until the kids gave him cards at the breakfast table (Babs' card a glossy one from the store, Jimmy's looking like some kind of special ed book report, with glue and glitter haphazardly smeared across it) and then he smiled and thanked them and Barbara said "Happy Birthday, Jim," in an absent voice from behind the toaster, and he had known that was it, had read everything in her voice right there.

The depressing thing was that it wasn't even terribly depressing.

He had stayed late at the office that night, not out of any contrivance, but because there was all the paperwork to wrap up from the Ibanez case. It was his first year as commissioner, and he had underestimated all the paperwork. But he had come back that night to a darkened and quiet house, and stood in the kitchen drinking the cold dregs of the morning's coffee. He hadn't had to look behind him to know there was someone standing in the kitchen with him.

"You can't just do that," he said irritably. "You can't just break into my house." But when he turned around, he was startled to see not the dark impassive face of Batman that he had expected, but Bruce Wayne: a face no less dark and impassive in its own way, he supposed, for all that he was wearing a white shirt and khakis. 

Bruce arched a brow. "Happy Birthday," he said.

"For God's sake," Jim sighed. "I guess it's pointless to ask how you know my birthday."

"I thought you'd be out."

"Late night at the office," he said, but Bruce's face was expressionless. He poured the rest of the stale coffee into another mug, and stuck it in the microwave to heat it. "Coffee?"

Bruce took the mug without demur, setting it on the counter beside him. Even in street clothes, he looked too larger-than-life to be in Jim's cramped kitchen, with its peeling formica and harsh fluorescent light. "I have a birthday present for you," he said, and Jim gave another deep sigh. 

"I swear to baby Jesus, if you are about to pull out another case file for me to examine, I am going to feed it to you."

Bruce's smile was thin. "It's not a case file. It's actually a present, but as it turns out, the police commissioner is hard to buy a gift for. The legal limits on what gifts you can accept, as a public servant, are remarkably low."

"A goat," Jim said, squinting at him. "Did you buy me one of those goddamn goats?" Bruce looked confounded, and Jim waved his hand. "You know, one of those things where you make a donation to buy a goat for a needy family in Paraguay or God knows where, and you get a picture of your happy family with their new goat. I don't want a picture of a fucking goat. Babs got me one of those for Christmas a few years back. Had to have that goddamn picture on my desk at work all year."

Bruce laughed softly, a small snort of sound. "I did not buy you a goat," he said. "I couldn't buy you any of the things you actually need, like a new car or a lower mortgage rate, or any of the things you might actually want, like a boat. You'd be surprised how little I am allowed to buy for you, officially speaking."

"Oh." He sipped at his own cold coffee. Come to think of it, he did want a boat. "All right, hand over my tie." 

Bruce set a wrapped box down on the counter. A bit square for a tie, but Jim tore it open anyway. It was a hinged box, and in the box was a watch. He set it on the counter, box and all, and looked at it like it might bite him. 

"Bruce," he said warningly.

"The legal limit is three hundred dollars," Bruce said smoothly. "That watch is vintage, but it's just an old Hamilton, nothing terribly valuable. It appraises at two seventy-five. You're legal, Commissioner."

"Oh," he said. It was a handsome watch, definitely vintage: brown alligator band, silver tank face, bold clear numbers. Elegant, but simple. He pulled it out of its box and felt the heft of it. "It's nice," he said. He didn't know what else to say, because it really was nice, and he was trying to get over the shock of it. All the strangeness of their—friendship was probably the word, though he felt the ill fit of it—but all the strangeness of their friendship, and yet the kind normalcy of this gift, of something he could actually use. It really was a good-looking watch, solid and respectable without being flashy. 

"I like the—" he said, and stopped, because he had turned the watch over, and the tendons in back of his knees loosened. "Holy Christ," he whispered. 

There were initials there. 

TSW, they read in cursive script. He didn't need to look up at Bruce's face to know those initials stood for Thomas Sutterforth Wayne. 

He knew what they stood for, because he had memorized the file he had started on the Wayne family, years ago: a file that now included sub-headers like _Richard John Grayson-Wayne, Jason Peter Todd-Wayne, deceased_ , and more recently, _Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne_. He knew his Waynes backwards and forwards. He knew the Sutterforths, too, knew they were the real bluebloods in Bruce's family tree, because the Waynes might have been robber barons and industrial magnates of the first order, but it was the Sutterforths who had been civic leaders in this country for four hundred years, and it was the Sutterforths who had chiseled Bruce's jaw that sharp. 

He stared at the watch in his palm, at the initials that stared back at him. "Jesus Christ," he said weakly, and he met Bruce's eyes. "You can't," he said.

"I can."

"Bruce," he said. He didn't know what to say. "I don't know what to say," he said. 

"You don't have to say anything. I don't wear it. Someone should."

"You should—you should keep it. Your boys—"

"My boys have plenty. This belongs to you. My father believed in Gotham almost as much as you do. You're the one who should wear his watch."

Jim stared at the slick heavy thing in his palm. "Thank you," he said. He didn't trust himself to say more. He fumbled with trying to put it on. Bruce reached over to help him, got it buckled on him. There was a small dark spot right by the buckle, and he couldn't help staring at that spot, transfixed, wondering if Thomas Wayne had been wearing it the night he died.

"My father spent his days at the hospital," Bruce said, following his eyes. "It's why he didn't wear a fancy watch, on a daily basis. He wore a different one, for going out in the evenings. If that's a bloodstain on the band—and I'm not saying it isn't—it's not his, at any rate." 

Jim looked at the watch on his wrist. Jim seized Bruce's hand, clasped it. It was just that he didn't know what else to say, so they stood there like that: hands clasped, resting on the counter. He was afraid if he squeezed Bruce's hand any tighter he would hurt him, but he might have known better. Bruce's hand was warm and firm and held his back, just as tight.

He looked from their joined hands to Bruce's face. Some frisson of warning shivered him, and he released Bruce's hand. Too quickly, as it turned out. Bruce's eyes narrowed at him. Light eyes. He had seen the portraits. None of the Waynes before Bruce had had such light eyes. 

The back stair creaked, and Jim swallowed, turned to face Barbara. He felt the small breeze from the window, and knew what it meant, that Bruce was gone. Barbara was rubbing at her face and yawning, blinking a little at the brightness of the kitchen. It would be helpful if he did not still find her beautiful, if there were no part of him that wanted to kiss the laugh lines at the corner of her eye. 

"Didn't mean to fall asleep," she murmured.

"It's all right. I was just having a little coffee. Finished up some paperwork at the office. Sorry I missed dinner."

She gave him a rueful, cockeyed smile that might have meant any number of things, but probably meant _are we still pretending you occasionally eat dinner here_. She yawned again. The box and wrapping on the counter had disappeared with Bruce, but the watch was visible on his wrist. She didn't say anything about it, and Jim knew she wouldn't. Not because she didn't care, but because she wasn't even going to notice. She wasn't going to notice, because she no longer looked at him.

* * *

It was another year before Barbara was finally gone. It was so gradual the kids were almost unbothered by it, the whole disentangling from their life in Gotham. Long weekends at their aunt's in Boston became longer weekends, became weeks, and eventually there was talk about the great school district Maisie's kids were in, and how inexpensive housing was in that neighborhood, and how the dance program at the local school was exactly what Babs was looking for, and the _de facto_ separation had happened before anyone had really had a conversation about it. 

The first week that Barbara and the kids were out of the house, with no plans to come back to Gotham anytime soon, Jim sat in his kitchen every night and smoked. He sat in the dark, because that seemed like the sort of sad thing about-to-be divorced dads did. And he smoked because he could smoke in the house now, which somehow instead of being liberating was just sadder. The fourth night he sat there, he knew he wasn't alone before his second drag on his Salem. 

"Well, pull up a chair," he said, and Bruce did. "Please don't tell me you're sorry to hear about it, or some bullshit like that."

Silently, Bruce thunked a bottle on the table. "Nice," said Jim. "Line 'em up."

Bruce thunked two shot glasses down beside the bottle. They knocked back the first round. Jim's eyes widened at the rich burn sliding down his throat. "Goddamn," he said. "What is that?"

"It's a 1939 Macallan. I have to drink it with you because if I gave it to you, it would violate the 300-dollar gift limit."

Jim examined his glass. "By how much?"

"By about 9, 825 dollars."

Jim sprayed his second shot of scotch across the room in a choking splutter. "Jesus H," he said.

"Try not to spit out too much of it, if you don't mind."

"You been saving this for a special occasion?"

Bruce poured them another round. "This one."

Jim swallowed the burn of that along with the deeper, thicker burn of the liquor. "It's good scotch," he managed.

"You have a gift for understatement."

They drank in silence. They sat in the dark. "I've never asked you too many personal questions," Jim said after a while.

"You haven't," Bruce agreed.

"You ever been in love?"

"Yes."

"What happened? Did you get left, or did you do the leaving?"

Bruce's eyes were shadowed pits in the dark. The only light was the streetlight slanting through the window, and it planed his face, masking it better than the Bat cowl. "I said I'd been in love. I didn't say I'd ever been loved back."

"Oh," Jim said. He tried to think of something sensitive to say, but couldn't. "That's—you win, that's sadder than mine, okay." He tried not to laugh, but couldn't stop once he had started.

Bruce was laughing too, that soft sound Jim knew so well. His laugh smelled like liquor, across the too-small table. Or too big, now that it was just going to be him sitting at it. "Thank you for your compassion," Bruce said, and that just made him laugh harder.

After two more rounds, Bruce upended his shot glass and clunked it down. "Get up," he said. "I think you're drunk enough."

"Oh yeah? What about you?"

"I'm drunk too. Come on, stand up." 

He did, and found his back slammed into the refrigerator. "Ow," he said.

"Sorry," said Bruce. His mouth was surprisingly close, right by Jim's ear. He also did not sound apologetic. "I want you to listen to me, very closely. Something is about to happen that you are going to let happen, something you need very much."

"Are you going to suck me," Jim said. It wasn't a question, because while he might have had courage enough for the words, Dutch though it be, he had no air for the question mark. He had the satisfaction of watching Bruce swallow.

"Yes."

"All right."

"Two rules," he said. "No reciprocation of any sort, and no touching. Do you agree to my rules?"

It was Jim's turn to swallow. "I'm not—hard," he said.

"You will be." 

Bruce was removing his glasses, setting them carefully on the counter. Jim could hear the small creak of Bruce's knee as he went down. It occurred to him that this was where he should probably say _no wait stop_ , but then his zipper was sliding down, and he forgot why this was a bad idea. 

The thing was, he had had plenty of blowjobs in his life. 

Plenty of excellent ones, or so he had thought. 

Bruce Wayne's mouth on his cock was another order of thing altogether. 

He stifled his first groan before he remembered he didn't really have to. Bruce pulled his mouth off long enough to say, "Be as loud as you want to," and that just made Jim groan more. 

"Fuck," he panted. "Oh Jesus fuck." Bruce's lips were thick and his tongue was evil and there were fingers on his balls doing all the things he did to himself right before he was about to come, and how did he know, just how did he know. When he started to thrust there wasn't even a hand pushing against him, holding him down. Bruce was just going to let him fuck his mouth. 

"You—fuck—" His hips jerked up, and Bruce coughed, gagged a little, and how sick was he that it was that right there that broke him, the sound of Bruce choking on his cock. "Fuck fuck fuck—oh fuck," he gasped, and he came all in his mouth and quite a bit on his face. His fingers were clutched around the top of the fridge, trying to hold on, as the last of it pulsed out of him. 

Bruce stood, and didn't wipe his face. Fucking didn't wipe his face. Jim could hear how heavy his breathing was, could see the rise and fall of his chest. Those pants weren't loose enough to hide the stiff outline beneath them. Bruce was stiff for him. Bruce wanted to come, because of him. Because of swallowing his cock. 

"I know the reason for your rules," Jim said, when he had breath back. He wasn't even lying, either: he knew the reason. He had been saving up enough pieces over the years now, and he knew why Bruce did the things that he did, most of them. 

"Do you," Bruce said evenly.

"If I followed the rules, would you do anything I asked?"

"Yes." There wasn't even the smallest hesitation.

Jim tucked himself back in, ran a hand through his hair. "Get undressed."

Bruce was frozen. He knew what an impossible thing he was asking. That was why he had asked it. "Do what I say," Jim said, and Bruce did it. His shirt first, laid carefully over the back of a chair, then his pants, also folded. Slip-on shoes slipped off. He stood immobile in the dark, but his breathing was fast. If he didn't know Bruce—if he hadn't spent the last ten years of his life learning him—he would have said he was frightened. But he had never seen Bruce frightened of anything. He wanted to touch him, reassure him in some way. But that would have been a violation of rule two.

He tilted his head to take him in, the whole glorious sight of him. That big cock was hard enough to drive nails. Hard enough to hurt. There was a sheen on it, a heavy glisten caught in the light from the window. 

Jim pulled out a cigarette and lit it, shaking out his match. He leaned against the counter and studied Bruce. "You always get that wet?" he asked. 

"No." Bruce's voice was hoarse.

"That's because of me, then."

"Yes."

"From sucking me." He took a long drag, and kept his eyes on Bruce's face. "I asked you a question."

"Yes."

Jim nodded. "Good," he said. He reached for his jacket and pulled out his cuffs. "Sit," he said, and Bruce did. He kept his cigarette in his mouth while he cuffed him—just his left wrist to the back of the chair, not his right. He was careful not to touch. He was making this up as he went along, but everything he knew about Bruce, everything he guessed, told him he was not wrong. 

"Go on," he said, with a vague wave of the hand that held the cigarette. "Do what you need to do."

He marked the twitch of Bruce's right hand, its hesitation. "I said, go on."

Bruce began stroking himself, with minimal movement. Jim swallowed smoke at the sight, and fought the cough. It was like that long-ago time down at the docks, seeing Bruce hurl his shoulder back into joint with a growl of pain—just that visceral a reminder of the man's humanity. He had spent plenty of time around Bruce out of the suit, over the last ten years, but somehow it was still possible to forget the man was human, with human needs, with all the small shameful lusts that made up human flesh. The rise and fall of Bruce's chest was getting faster.

"How often do you jerk off?" He caught the hitch in Bruce's movement at the question. 

"Every day." His voice was lower now, a bit hoarser. 

"Really." Jim took another long drag, and ashed in the sink. "That's quite a lot, for a man your age. Usually late 30s, early 40s, that's when you might slow down to a couple times a week, maybe even just once a week."

He watched the motion of Bruce's hand in the dark. After the catch in his rhythm, he had now sped up. "So you think about sex a lot," he said.

"I—yes."

There was a world packed into that stutter, and Jim considered it. His own cock was stirring back to life, watching this. Funny to think about. He hadn't ever thought about another man jerking off being sexy. In college, was where he had first discovered that release with another man could be satisfying and complication-free; he had thought he would have to squelch that particular pastime when he entered the academy, but of course he had been wrong about that one. Not that it had mattered for years and years. The part of him that gave and took sexual pleasure of any sort had been buried under rocks for a long time. The tip of his cigarette glowed red as he sucked on it. 

"Ever wish you thought about sex less?"

"Yes." The hand was faster now. Jim circled the chair, slowly.

"Tell me what you think about, when you do this alone."

"You."

Suspect was trying to gain control of the interview. He flicked his ash off onto Bruce's thigh, and with it a bit of the burning tip, just a flake or two of the hot ash. 

"Jim—" Bruce's gasp was not all pain, not by a long shot, and wasn't that interesting. The more you knew.

"Here's the thing," Jim said. He was behind Bruce now, his voice low in his ear. "You'll come when I say."

"Jim," came the quiet sound. The hand was fast, the muscles on his arm taut. Breathless now.

"When I say," he repeated. "You close?"

"Yes."

"You want to come?"

"Y-yes. Jim." The vowel of his name was lengthened just a hair. 

"Take your hand off."

Bruce's breath was loud in the small room. He obeyed, but Jim could see the convulsive clutch of his muscles, like he needed to be touching himself. "Tell me." More ash fell onto Bruce's shoulder. "Is there a lot, when you come?"

For the first time, Bruce's groan was out loud and unrestrained. "Answer me. Is there a lot?"

"Yes," was the whispered answer.

"Good. That's good to know. I think I'm going to let you come now." Faster than Bruce's hand could move, he had palmed his spare set of cuffs and clicked them around Bruce's right wrist and the chair. A cop's kitchen: probably not enough ingredients for a decent well-balanced meal, but always an extra pair of cuffs. He had the satisfaction of seeing Bruce tug at the restraint—surprise, anger, frustration, he couldn't tell.

"Jim."

"You want to come?"

" _Jim_."

"I said, do you—"

"Yes, I—Jim, _fuck_ —"

It was the profanity that decided him. His voice in Bruce's ear was as gentle as he could make it. "Then let me break a rule."

Bruce's head tilted back in what even Jim could read for abandon. He reached around to Bruce's front and with just the pad of his index finger, rubbed him right on the frenulum. A fast and furious rub. Bruce's legs spread wider, wrapped around the legs of the flimsy chair now. He wondered if that was involuntary. Bruce's breath sounded like he might be choking. For a brief second he paused. Bruce bucked underneath him, hips straining upward. 

He resumed his small sharp rubbing. Bruce's every inhale was a groan now. He was seconds from coming, inches. His thighs were tremoring. He was poised on the edge, almost there, but for some reason—

With his left hand, Jim plunged the tip of the cigarette into Bruce's thigh. The guttural shout was loud enough to wake several city blocks, let alone the neighbors. Bruce jerked and arched like a bent bow, and thick white juice spurted from the tip of his slit, painting his chest and the bottom of his chin and a bit of Jim's hand. The kitchen smelled of burning and come and sweat. Bruce's groan was almost a growl, his neck gone boneless. Mouth slack, brow smoothed and beautiful. You didn't realize how much happened on that face until you saw it wiped of everything but a lightning storm of pleasure.

Jim's own breathing was fast now, too. His cock was all the way back to hard. He was going to go upstairs and rub it so fast, spray come all over his sheets just like Bruce, like Bruce did every night. 

He flicked the butt of his cigarette in the sink and made it to the kitchen stairs. He leaned against the doorframe for a second or two just to get his bearings. 

"Jim." The voice was questioning. He could see Bruce's head half-turned in the dark, could hear the experimental rattle of the cuffs. 

He gave a small exhausted laugh. "I'm betting you can find the keys in here somewhere," he said. "And if you can't get out of those, well, don't give up your day job."

He flicked the lights on the stairs on his way up, and fell against the wall at the top of the stairs, unable to believe what he had just done. Every nerve in his body was trembling. Below he could hear the sounds of Bruce extricating himself, dressing, sliding back out the window the way he had come. He knew he only heard because Bruce let him. He knew they would never talk about it. 

His cock ached for it again.

* * *

Because Bruce hadn't wanted to see him flinch: that had been the reason for Bruce's rules that night. 

It hadn't been hard to figure out. For all his detective skills, Bruce hadn't pieced together enough about his orientation to know just how much gay Jim could deal with. He hadn't wanted to see Jim try to reciprocate, and flinch at it. That had been just what he couldn't take. 

Outwardly, nothing changed. His interactions with Batman were the same as ever, and even his interactions with Bruce. There might have been one time—but it might have been his imagination, too. About a week after the events of that night, he had been conferring with Batman up on the roof of headquarters, with two of his junior officers, and he had glanced over at Bruce and for some reason—some trick of the light, maybe—saw his mouth, and couldn't unsee it. It was the only part of his body he could really see, in the cowl, but still. It was just that he all of a sudden realized he hadn't kissed it, the other night—that they hadn't kissed. Those lips had been on his cock, but not his mouth. 

And then Bruce was looking at him, oddly, his head tilted. Masked face impenetrable. Jim looked quickly away.

The next night, Bruce was in his bedroom. 

"Christ Almighty," he swore, chest pounding at the dark outline of a figure by the window. He hadn't seen him until he had turned out the light, but it was clear he had been standing there some time. No cape or cowl — just Bruce. "You can't do that. In two seconds I would have had my hand around my piece and fired a round into you."

Wordlessly Bruce held up the ammo clip. 

"I suppose it's not worth pointing out you can't do that either."

He could see enough of Bruce's face to see the wry twist of his mouth. He didn't move, and it occurred to Jim he was waiting for an invitation. Only Bruce would think it acceptable to break into your house and lie in wait in your bedroom, but think he needed an invitation for more. As if more evidence were needed that the idea of boundaries in Bruce's head was a confused notion.

Jim sat up in bed. He was bare to the waist, and he saw Bruce looking. He didn't hide that he was looking. "Come here," Jim said. Bruce knelt beside the bed like a little boy saying his prayers. 

"I didn't think this was going to happen again," Jim said.

"I didn't either." Bruce's voice was soft, a bit hoarse.

"There's something I'd like to try."

"Anything."

The promise inherent in that word made his cock shift, begin to stir. He knew Bruce meant it, too. He leaned forward and took Bruce's mouth in his, and kissed him. Bruce was too startled to kiss him well, so Jim took control of it. Put a hand around his neck, pulled him in. Kissed him like Bruce deserved to be kissed, kissed him like he had longed to for years without knowing the name for the longing or even what it was. Take that, George Clooney. 

He lifted his lips from Bruce's, and Bruce was stretched on top of him in an instant, all the warmth of his long hard body, all that firmness of muscle. Bruce's hips were already moving against his. "Get under the covers," Jim whispered, and Bruce slid quickly in, still fully clothed, and they were kissing again, more intentionally now, harder. Their hips were still rubbing against each other. Jim only had on thin pyjama bottoms, pushing against Bruce's thicker pants, but the friction felt so good.

"Can you come like this," Bruce whispered, and Jim groaned in answer. Bruce reached an arm across to the nightstand and placed something on it. A small solid thunk. It was a knife, a wicked curved little switchblade. The kind made to nestle in your palm. The kind you could use to inflict a short sharp spear of pain. The hesitation in Bruce's gesture told him everything he needed to know.

"Can you get off without it," Jim said, and Bruce gave a quick nod. He was—Jesus Christ, he was embarrassed. Jim seized his face and kissed him harder, and this was really nothing, kissing a guy was way easier than he had thought it would be, though the stubble was surprising. Also surprising in that it was not at all a turn-off, really not at all. 

He came in his pants, rubbing against the stiff bulge of Bruce's groin. Bruce was humping on top of him, and there were sounds coming out of Bruce's throat, out of his own throat, that he didn't know either of them could make. "I'm gonna come—fuck," he panted, and Bruce's hands were curling around his ass, pulling him in closer. "Oh Jesus," he groaned, because he was soaking the front of his pyjamas, he was shooting in his pants like some teenager. 

Bruce made a feral noise and bit his neck—fucking _bit_ it, and they would be having the discussion about how only one of them was into pain like that, thank you very much—and slammed his groin into Jim, and Jim knew he was coming too, could hear it in his breathing and the rhythmic shake of his limbs, and Jim got his hands around Bruce's ass, too. "God, I want to fuck you," Bruce groaned, and a last aftershock of orgasm twisted Jim's balls at that. 

He got his mouth back on Bruce's, and the kissing went on forever, kept going like no kissing he had ever been a part of. There was so much to taste in Bruce's mouth, so many different things it did, so many things it said to him. 

He kicked out of his disgusting pajama bottoms and helped Bruce slide out of his probably even more disgusting layers, and then with a few more contortions they were finally and fully naked together, pressed against each other in the dark. "I promise not to throw up on you this time," Jim said, and Bruce reared back to look at him.

"You remember that," he said.

"Hard to forget."

Bruce's fingers combed through his hair. Almost too thick for a man's hair, Barbara used to say. He had gone salt-and-pepper early. Bruce was weaving it in his fingers. "Sorry about your neck," he said.

"Mm. Let's keep it on the masochism side of S and M, and less on the sadism, shall we?"

Bruce's mouth gave that wry tilt again. "This was your fault," he said.

"Which part?"

"I was going to leave it. I thought I would be able to. But then you looked at me the other night, like that."

"I don't remember that," Jim lied. "How did I look at you?"

"Like sex."

"Must have been thinking about somebody else."

"Mm hm," Bruce said. His hand was wandering downward now, stroking a trail down Jim's body, to toy absently with his sated sticky cock. There was a finger twining gently in his pubic hair, brushing against his balls. "This is not a good idea," Bruce whispered.

"I thought I was the one with the gift for understatement."

"Jim. We can't do this again."

"Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem," Jim sighed. He felt Bruce's silent chuckle against him. "No worries there."

They negotiated space, careful of angles and tangled limbs. Bruce clearly had a thing for his hair, because the hand didn't stop stroking. He didn't know how long it kept stroking, or if Bruce even slept, because when he woke around four, Bruce was gone.

The little knife was still on the bedside table, though: warning, or promise, or both. Jim curled a hand around it, and went back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of an orphan (though well-loved) story I have held off posting, mainly because I ended up using the trope of the knife that Bruce needs to come in another story, Bruises. But the truth is, Bruce as masochist is just part of my irrevocable headcanon, and people who read my stories should just get used to the idea that the same images and ideas will crop up in stories that occur in different universes, because the settings may change but my basic conception of these individuals does not.
> 
> In my head (as I hope is clear in the story) my Jim is much closer to the Jim Gordon of Batman: Year One, in which Bruce and Jim are roughly of an age and starting their careers in Gotham at more or less the same time. The wildly paternal Jim Gordon of Nolan's trilogy was an interesting choice, but is a very different universe from this story. 
> 
> And finally, I guess the truth is I held off posting this because I don't think it will find much of a readership. It's not a large sampling of people who are interested in this particular pairing, but for those who are, well. . . this is for both of you.


End file.
